— heading for the cosmos at 38,000 miles per hour.
—New York Times, June 27, 2013

Blind Willie never remembered what the stars
looked like, they say his own mother blinded
him in a fit of rage, he built himself a cigar-box
guitar, preached on the streets of Texas, ran
one House of Prayer and lived in its burned ruins
at the end before he contracted malaria along with
syphilis, no hospital would take him in, he died
penniless bundled in wet newspapers.

He sang for tips, made five records, rhythmic
pickings and slide guitar, moaning in wordless
hums Dark was the Night now on gold sailing
far past Pluto, our world’s tale to spacefarers,
40,000 years to the next planetary system
or an advanced civilization in interstellar
space, a bottle into the cosmic ocean
Blind Willie never saw that far.

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry. Over 130 of her poems appear in dozens of online venues and in anthologies. The natural world is generally her framework; she often focuses on the tension between nature and humanity, using concrete images to illuminate the loss of meaning between them. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.